The starport was a big one, especially by Nearer Fringe standards. It was the city’s biggest employer, divided into multiple sections for different sorts of traffic. Nestled in between those was a strip devoted to hotels, various sorts of commerce, and every imaginable kind of entertainment.

The two of them passed by dance halls, water halls, gaming areas, gymnasiums, brothels, theatres, snack bars, and there were even a couple of chem houses. Those were legal in the city, although tucked in behind everything else, with signs leading the way through alleys.

The place had been busy every previous time Gaylen had visited it, and the chaos of the ongoing war had only made it more so. Many long-standing trade lanes were either cut off or simply rendered obsolete by devastation at the end point. And so, like water when its channel was disrupted, trade found new directions.

As always, Gaylen enjoyed the sight of disparate people from all over, even as he remained conscious of thieves and other hazards. Kiris walked by his side, back in her customary drab, baggy clothing.

They found Jaquan first, beneath a tall palm tree that had been planted in a small dirt bed.

“So, you two are done?” the man asked with a smile.

“Are you?” Gaylen shot back.

“An engineer’s work is never done. But I have done what I can, in the time given to me. I would have liked more.”

“You always want more, Jaquan. All these years of knowing you, and I’m still not entirely sure when it is actually called for, and when you just want to indulge in your life’s only passion.”

“You will never understand the quiet pleasures of keeping a ship in top shape,” Jaquan told him. “The way everything…”

He held his hands up, as if he were admiring a painting.

“... comes together, into an interconnected whole. Our own little biosphere, out in the vast, vast vacuum of space. I think most people forget just how big a deal that is.”

“You’re good at what you do, and I’ve never said anything to the contrary.”

“No. You’re smarter than that.”

“I am,” Gaylen said. “Now, where are… ah, there they are.”

Herdis and Bers came down one of the side streets. Given the overall safety of the starport, and strict gun laws, she wasn’t wearing her armoured suit for once, opting for a shirt and a skirt instead. Bers wore his dark, much-repaired overcoat, and coupled with the wild hair and beard Gaylen had been slightly worried the station security would take him for a vagrant.

“And what have you two been doing?” Gaylen asked.

“It’s not always about doing,” Herdis said, and smiled. “Sometimes it’s about seeing. I’ve been doing this with you folks for a while now, and places like this still have an appeal.”

“There is a lot to see, yes,” Gaylen said.

Bers just made a drinking motion with his empty hand, and flashed his big, ugly grin. He was a liquor man while off-ship, and as the pair came over Gaylen could smell it. At least the man was a happy drunk.

“Right,” Gaylen said. “Well. Let’s go see her.”

“Yes!” Bers barked.

They walked down the strip’s main street for a while, before turning down a major side street. It was mostly set aside for light dining, much of it outdoors. Herdis swept her gaze every which way in a controlled, disciplined search.

“What are you doing?” Jaquan asked her.

“I’m about sixty percent certain that the girl is going to show off by sneaking up on us,” the woman replied. “And if I actually catch her at it, it will be the highlight of my day.”

“You have strange priorities,” Jaquan told her.

“Says a man who spends his life half inside an engine.”

“Gaylen, remind her how important my dedicated work is when we traverse an infinite void of pure death.”

“Herdis, Jaquan wants me to remind you how-”

“Yeah, I heard him!” the woman replied.

Gaylen smiled.

“She’s behind you,” Kiris told Herdis.

The woman turned sharply, and Gaylen looked back, but there was nothing to see. Herdis hesitated, unsure whether Kiris was messing with her or if she was just missing something.

“Or maybe elsewhere,” Kiris added, settling the question.

“Funny,” Herdis said.

“On rare occasions.”

Their destination was a single-storey brick diner, wearing a large awning like a brimmed hat. Small tables were spread out beneath it, and at one sat a small, lithe woman with chalk-white hair and skin. At the sight of them her face split into a big grin, and she gave a wave.

“Well, how is your day, Herdis?” Gaylen asked.

“My day is fine, thank you.”

They closed the distance, and the girl got up.

Getting in touch with people who stayed mobile on the lanes was an inexact and often frustrating process. It consisted of leaving messages in starports, either with people one knew, or paid services, and was immensely helped by having an idea of the person’s general patterns. And once the message was received, there was the issue of getting a reply, through basically the same process. And then a reply to the reply.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

But now all that was over with, and here they were.

“Well, hello folks! It’s been a while!”

“It has!” Herdis said, and was the first to step up to her.

They embraced.

“And no sneaking around?” she went on. “Just sitting out in the open? I’m proud of you.”

“I wanted to, but I didn’t want to lose my table.”

“Ah, a logical explanation.”

Kiris was next, and as before it did Gaylen good to see the woman express genuine affection for someone. Jaquan went with a handshake and a fond nod, but the man was at ease with his relations to other people. Gaylen was second to last, and she put her arms around him.

“Nice to see you, Admiral.”

“I’ve told you to quit it with that title.”

“You sure have, boss. You sure have.”

She let go and held her hands up, palms out.

“And see? I didn’t nick anything.”

“Because I was on alert for it,” he told her.

“Yeah,” she replied, with a bit of mock sourness. “I’ll have to wait until you’re distracted. Hello, big and hairy.”

Bers picked her off the ground as if she were made of air, then put her back down with a chuckle.

“Ah, booze breath,” Ayna commented.

“Good booze!” he replied, then gave her a shoulder-pat that rocked her back a step. “Hello, little white!”

The five of them borrowed enough unused chairs to join Ayna at her table, although it was a bit of an awkward fit.

“So!” Ayna said with her characteristic energy. “What have you guys been up to, while I wasn’t watching out for you?”

“Well, we got trapped in a high-rise along with an entire horde of the hungry dead,” Kiris said. “That was… fun.”

“What, you’re… fighting vampires now?” Ayna asked.

“She means marbozi,” Gaylen said. “The result of brown jendra. And it really wasn’t fun.”

He didn’t like the sudden downturn of his mood. Not when he’d been enjoying a get-together with people he liked. But that was such a blood-drenched memory.

He shook his head.

“Still, we fought our way out,” Kiris said. “And Gaylen here did a good deed.”

“A second one?” Ayna asked impishly. “Wow.”

“It just sort of happened,” Gaylen said, and met Kiris’s golden gaze. There was something of a challenge in it, and he supposed she was giving him another push into accepting that part of himself.

“And what about you?” Jaquan asked. “When you left, you said something about maybe travelling with Fredrak for a bit?”

“And I went through with it,” the Dwyyk said. “What can I say? You loud, clumsy baselines tend to have a need for someone smooth and silent.”

She walked her fingers silently across the table.

“And were you doing the interesting sort of black ops work?” Gaylen asked. “Or just stalking potential informants for blackmail material?”

Ayna’s face did a strange thing that he decided to ask Kiris about later. It seemed a bit like amusement, although much more restrained than her usual bubbliness.

“Oh, it got interesting alright,” she then said, and followed it with a disbelieving chuckle. “I ran into Saketa again, for one thing. Yeah, and I gave her our collective thanks for that whole thing on Wembella.”

“For using Warden powers to help deal with the pirates,” Gaylen said.

“Yup! She’s a Warden, sure enough. I mean… I sort of ended up tagging along with her, back to Kalero itself. I spent some time there with… just fascinating people. Not to mention the wildlife.”

“You went to Kalero?” Gaylen asked, surprised.

“Yeah.”

She looked at Bers.

“Your people know hers, right? You… know what they do?”

That look of seriousness made one of its rare appearances on Bers’s face.

“Power,” the warrior said. “Old power.”

“Yeah. And before that I went around with her and Fredrak and some other people. It had to do with the war. And… I honestly think not even Kiris could convince you I was telling the truth if I told you all the full story.”

She shook her head, as if she was having trouble believing it herself.

“Crazy. Just crazy,” the Dwyyk said. “Buuut now I’m back, and I want to get back to more familiar stuff. I mean, I’m glad I skipped the brown jendra stuff. But other than that… well, a reliable payday is nice. So, will you have me again, boss-admiral-captain-man?”

“I will take you on a probationary basis, dependent on you never, ever calling me that again,” Gaylen told her.

There was that impish grin again.

“No promises.”

“No no, Ayna. Promise.”

She sighed, with just a hint of affect.

“Fine. I promise.”

“Then welcome back on board,” he told her. “And just a reminder: Don’t steal anything from anyone while you are associated with the Addax.”

“I remember,” she told him. “And I got a pretty good payment out of our spooky government agent friend. “And, uh…”

She tapped her fingers together, and looked a bit unsure. Her eyes drifted to Kiris, who of course could see right through her.

“You better just spit it out, snowball,” Kiris told her.

“Well… on the topic of payments…” the Dwyyk began. “Do you have a pressing job set up, at the moment?”

“Pressing?” Gaylen said. “No, not as such. I was planning on making some pickups here, but… not pressing, if there are better options. Why?”

“Because… after I got back to the Nearer Fringe, I met a certain someone again. He’s over there.”

The diner’s windows were tinted brown, making the inside seem gloomy. But he could still make out a familiar face. It was Fredrak, sitting at one of the inside tables.

“Ah,” he said neutrally, not sure how to feel about this.

“He wants to talk to you.”

“I figured.”

Gaylen looked away from the window, and considered this.

The FedCom agent wouldn’t be here for a friendly chat. They weren’t friends. And he wouldn’t be here over a small matter, because from what he’d seen the man did not deal in those. And big matters were dangerous.

“Sorry?” Ayna said hesitantly. “Me and him, we did go through some insanely risky stuff together, and it just felt… well…”

“I get it,” Gaylen said.

He’d weathered great danger with the people at this very table, after all. He looked around, at the lot of them.

“Opinions?”

“Well, I barely got to know him at all,” Herdis said. “But it seems rude not to at least hear him out.”

“He did prove that he has access to deep pockets,” Jaquan pointed out. “And there is no limit to the ways to make a ship more efficient and dependable.”

“Of course you would bring it all back to the ship,” Gaylen said to his friend.

“Someone has to,” the engineer replied, with a curly smile on his lips. “Guys, Gaylen only does the flying itself. I’m the one who makes it possible.”

“And you can even make things not fly,” Gaylen said as he stood up. “Herdis, Bers, why don’t you tell Ayna the Gilded Box story while the rest of us have a chat with the spook?”

“Ooh, sounds interesting,” the pasty girl commented.

“Yeah, it’s interesting how much trouble other people’s stupidity can cause,” Herdis said, as she shifted to face Ayna more.

Bers just chuckled, and mimed the axe-blow that had decapitated Horruk.